


The Sound of the Truth

by orphan_account



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-24
Updated: 2014-07-03
Packaged: 2018-01-26 08:46:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 16,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1682174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Increasingly strange and violent murders are happening in Balitmore, Maryland, and Brian Zeller on his first undercover case, is sent to investigate. The FBI suspect that the culprit is operating under their noses, so Brian can't trust anyone except his new partner Jimmy Price. Will the two men be able to catch the killer in time, or will their personal relationship end up getting in the way?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is inspired by the ideas of the lovely [Roxanne](http://thisjabroni.tumblr.com)

The plane had been encompassed in cloud for the last forty five minutes of his journey from California. Brian was sitting in first class, staring out the window on his left hoping for a break from the unending grey. He was trying keep his mind calm by running over his cover story again and again making sure that no detail had been forgotten.  The best way to survive undercover work was to tell the truth as much as possible, that way there was less chance of acting unnatural. That’s what he’d been told anyway, this was Brian’s first undercover case.

His partner, Jimmy Price, had flown out last week and was already setting up the foundations of the investigation. They had only met briefly when they were assigned, and working with someone who much more experienced in undercover work was another thing that Brian was worried about. He didn’t want to seem inadequate.

He brought himself back to the present, and tried to focus on what was going on around him instead. His direct surroundings were mostly quiet; some men and women in suits were tapping away on keyboards and a few people were passing time by sleeping. Behind him, however, in the business class section of the vehicle, he could hear an array of noises. There was a baby crying, people laughing, talking, arguing, all of which wove together into a buzz of sound. Brian couldn’t pick out any individual conversations, but he found it comforting all the same. These people didn’t have anything to worry about.

An hour later, the plane finally broke through the cloud to land. As soon as he stepped onto the runway a sharp wind hit his face causing him to hunch over to conserve his heat. Above him the sky was as grey as it had been during the flight and he immediately wished to be back in the comfort of his own home.

He wasn’t expecting to be picked up, so it surprised him to see his new boss, Jack Crawford, waiting for him in arrivals. Technically, Brian didn’t start work until tomorrow. Jack put his hand up to him, beckoning him over.

“I didn’t get a chance to get a message to you,” he said by way of an apology. “It’s nice to finally meet you in person.”

“Yeah, you too,” Brian said, shaking the other man’s hand. “Is there a problem?” he asked, praying that the bubbling pit of worry that had just opened up in his stomach couldn’t be heard in his voice.

“We’ve got another one, Price and your other colleague Katz are already on their way. I could do with an extra set of hands,” Jack explained. Brian tried to hide his relief, crime scenes he could deal with.

“Of course,” he agreed. “May as well jump into the deep end, right?”

Jack gave him a single nod before leading him in the direction of the car. With his things securely in the trunk, he got in next to Jack.

“You might want to brace yourself, the things going on around here, they’re, well, they’re not pretty.”

Brian locked his jaw, and stared ahead. He’d seen the pictures of the recent murders that had been committed in Baltimore, Maryland. He knew exactly what he was getting into. He felt like he had been working backstage, and now he had been given a role in the show. These murders were theatrical to the highest degree, and whoever the culprit was, they were a perfectionist. There was never any evidence, never any clues, no way of knowing what was going to happen next. Each crime scene was intricately assembled like exhibits at an art installation, with a sickening amount of strange detail and embellishments going into each.

Having this knowledge, however, did not prepare Brian for the real thing.

***

He met Jimmy Price outside the crime scene. The last time they had met, Jimmy had seemed excitable, he was vastly intelligent and conducted himself well on the job, but he’d seemed excitable all the same. Completely different to the man who was now standing in front of him. Upon arrival Price had given Brian a minuscule shake of the head, his brow furrowed and his back tense. He’d seen that look at crime scenes before, it meant this was bad. 

“Good to see you again, it’s a shame it’s not under nicer circumstances,” Jimmy said, shaking Brian’s hand.

“You two know each other?” Jack asked.

“We met briefly at a conference a few weeks ago,” Jimmy lied smoothly. “If you come this way I can walk you through what we’ve got.”

Brian had dealt with some terrible things during his career with FBI, working in the lab meant he was up close and personal with dead of bodies of all kinds every day, but this was something else entirely. The warehouse building was dark due to the lack of windows, but across the ceiling someone had installed a lighting rig that put spotlights onto what the killer had done to the bodies.

Draped across boxes and railings were various bodies parts that looked as though they were items of clothing. Hands and arms that looked like gloves, feet and legs that looked like stockings, and propped up torsos cleaned so no gut was hanging out. Brian felt like he’d stepped into an unknown Salvador Dali painting, where instead of melting clocks he’d found melted people.

“Where are the bones?” Brian asked, inspecting an arm at was nearby.

“There are no bones, and no heads,” Jimmy said, looking through his notebook. “Lots of missing organs as well.”

“Do we have IDs?” Jack asked.

“Not yet, we’re working on it,” Jimmy said. “Katz hasn’t found anything either.”

“That’s because there’s nothing _to_ find,” Katz called over to them.  She stood up from where she was kneeling over a leg, and came over to the three men. “Apart from the body parts, this place is spotless,” she told them with the kind of frustration of someone who had an emotional obligation to find evidence. Flashes of photographs appeared in Brian’s mind; two of the victims had been agents. People who probably worked with Beverly, people she likely considered to be friends. Beverly wasn’t just looking for a killer, she was looking for revenge.

“Is it him?” Jack asked. Bev nodded.

“Yeah, I think so. The theatrics, the missing organs, the precision, it’s his MO.”

“Last time you found something, find something again,” Jack ordered. 

“It was a dog hair, Jack,” Katz protested. “It could have got there so many ways, and even if it fell off the killer, even though we _think_ we know the breed of the dog, the donor pool is still too big to narrow it down, Jack. It meant nothing.”

“Where’s Graham? I want Graham in on this,” Jack said, his temper looking as though it was about to surface. Katz said that he was on his way, and went back to her work. Jack went to wait outside, leaving Jimmy with Brian.

“Are you okay?” Jimmy asked, keeping his voice low.

“Yeah, I’m fine. There’s not much that can prepare you for this though,” Brian said, taking the crime scene camera off of Jimmy.

“You need to be able to shake this off,” Jimmy warned him. “Otherwise it will fuck you up and you’ll end up doing something stupid.”

“I know, I know. I’m fine,” he insisted.

“And remember,” Jimmy said, looking over his shoulder to make sure that no one was listening. “You’re just here as a crime scene investigator, don’t let anyone else think differently. _Do your job_.” 


	2. Chapter 2

Hours later at the lab, Brian, Jimmy and Beverly had managed to match up some of the body parts to each other, laying them out in pieces like an eerie jigsaw puzzle. Jack Crawford and Will Graham joined them, looking on in silence for a few minutes as the team of scientists worked away. The mood in the lab was dense, and anyone who spoke kept it as short as possible.

“What do you think, Will?” Jack asked after a while. Will Graham was a special agent for the FBI, meaning that he wasn’t really an agent at all. Zeller had heard rumours that it was because he wasn’t stable enough for the job, but the nonetheless, the FBI liked to use him to consult on cases. No one could made the pieces fit quite like Will Graham could.

“I think he’s getting bored,” he said carefully, walking down the room past body after body. “We haven’t seen him go this far before.” He paused and looked the body furthest away from the group. It was a stretch to call it a body, as with the others the head was missing, and this corpse in particular was also missing a leg and both arms, leaving only the mutilated torso and one other limb. “The stitching is messier on this one,” Will pointed out, shooting a pointed glance as Jack.

“Yes,” Brian said hurrying over. “We think that this was a kind of practise, the killer was still working out the neatest way to remove the bones and sew the flesh back together.”

“If you look at the ones this end it’s a much cleaner job,” Jimmy added.

“Do you think there might be bodies he discarded because they didn’t look good enough after he’d finished?” Jack questioned.

“I’d say so,” Brian nodded. He hated thinking about the fact there may be bodies – and parts of bodies – that he would probably never find. A sense of injustice weighed down on his shoulders that he had to ignore, his priority right now had to be what was in front of him.

“He’s pushing himself, trying to find his limits,” Will continued, now walking back up the line of bodies. “He does this for admiration, he _wants_ people to see it.”

“He considers himself an artist,” Jack finished for him. Will stopped and looked up at him, then gave a curt nod.

“I suppose he does.”

“Well that’s all very poetic, but it’s not helping us find him,” Jimmy said, waving his clipboard of notes around. “Bev didn’t find fibres, I didn’t find fingerprints, so the only thing we have to work on is the connection between the victims.”

“Which is what, exactly?” Will asked, fixing Jimmy with a stony stare.

“I don’t know yet,” Jimmy replied, turning his nose up slightly as if trying to retain his dignity. “So far there doesn’t seem to be a connection. Different races, different genders, different ages. This one over here?” He said, pointing at one of the smaller bodies. “We think is a fifteen year old boy who’s lived here all his life, whereas the one by Brian, is a sixty-three year old woman who moved here from Nigeria.”

“But they both live in town?” Will asked.

“Sure, those two do,” Bev chipped in after listening to the conversation. “But these two are from entirely different states who just happened to be visiting Baltimore,” she said gesturing at two of the corpses, then pointing at other two, “And there are no record of these two ever being in Balitmore.”

“So he’s choosing them at random?” Jack sighed.

“Well, there’s no such thing as random when it comes to serial killers,” Jimmy said. “But so far there is no apparent connection, sure,” he added quickly, on seeing Jack glare at him. After a week working under the boss of the BAU, Jimmy had already been yelled at three times, and it wasn’t something he thought he could get used to. Jack didn’t respond well to be questioned or corrected, as Jimmy was so used to doing with everyone else. He caught Brian’s eye briefly, and the other man pressed his lips together tightly, supressing a laugh.

***

Brian had been looking forward to a good night’s sleep ever since he’d arrived in Baltimore, and unlocking his new front door with Jimmy Price standing him gabbling away about their plan of action for the next day, had not something he had factored into his evening’s plans.

As soon as they were inside and Brian has chucked his suitcase into the bedroom, Jimmy started planning what food he wanted to eat that night, and so Brian guessed Jimmy was here to stay for a while. With this information he made himself comfortable on the couch and tried not to give away how heavy his eyelids were.

“Intense day, huh?” Jimmy asked, sitting down on the leather arm chair which was at a right angle to the couch.

“Something like that,” Brain agreed. “How’s this week been?”

“Tough,” Jimmy admitted. “I’ve spent nearly every night going through the files for everyone who works here, which you can help me with now you’re here.”

“Any leads yet?”

“Yeah, there was a file that explicitly stated one of the agents we work with is a serial killer,” Jimmy laughed, Brian rolled his eyes but could help but smile. At least working with Jimmy meant someone would be trying to keep the mood light.

“Very funny. So nothing suspicious so far then?”

“Not that I can find,” Jimmy shrugged, “But we can worry about that later, you look like you need to eat. I’ve got a three takeaways on speed dial, what you want?”

An hour later, the coffee table now piled up with boxes from Chinese takeaway, Brian sat back feeling more contended than he had done all day. Now the longing to sleep was almost overbearing, but he knew Jimmy wanted to get some work done before he went back to his own apartment.

He picked up some paper work Jimmy had got out a few minutes before and started rifling through, pretending he was taking information in, in case Jimmy was watching him. Jimmy copied him, unbeknownst to each other and neither man was in the mood for reading about their co-workers in such great depths.

“Do you think Purnell is right, do you think that the he killer is someone who works for the FBI?” Brian asked about fifteen minutes later, putting the papers on the seat next to him. The idea made him fidgety, generally he was an easy going person, and knowing that he couldn’t trust anyone he had to see on a day to day basis made him tense. It made him question if he was right for this job.

“Has Purnell _ever_ been wrong? The woman has some kind of sixth sense,” Jimmy said, half way between a joke and the grim truth that someone, maybe someone they had spoken to today, was the most profound serial killer of their time.   

Brian flashed back to the interview he’d had with Purnell a couple of months before. She needed an agent used to lab work, used to analysing crime scenes that could go undercover in Baltimore. The killings had been going on for too long, and she felt as though the people reporting to her were hiding something. Why had he said yes? Recognition perhaps, maybe he wanted the challenge. Whatever it had been, he couldn’t start second guessing himself now.

“This is your first undercover case, right?” Jimmy asked, leaning forward to engage in conversation.

“Yeah, you were probably hoping for someone a bit more experience,” Brian said, trying to make it sounds like a joke, and not as though he was craving any kind of acceptance.

“You’re doing just fine so far,” Jimmy said, the kindness in his voice coming as a surprise. “Just don’t do anything stupid, make sure we’re both on the same page at all time, that way I will always have your back, and I hope you’ll always have mine.”

“Of course,” Brian nodded dutifully. “Partner,” he added with grin, the other agent chuckling in return.

After a moment of quiet, Jimmy sighed and put the papers back into his bag. “We’re not going to get anywhere with that tonight, and Crawford will want us bright and fresh eyed tomorrow.”

“Good call,” Brian agreed. “I need some beauty sleep.”

“No you don’t, you’re blessed with good genetics whether you’re tired or not,” Jimmy said as he reached the door, adding a corny wink before he left the apartment. Brian sat where he was, unsure of how he was supposed to react to that. He guessed that it was just Jimmy’s sense of humour, he couldn’t have intended to make his new partner stare at the door after him, pleasantly surprised by the nicest thing he’d heard in a long time.


	3. Chapter 3

“I reckon it’s this woman,” Brian snorted, handing Jimmy a file. The two of them had been meticulously analysing the files of every FBI employee for weeks, with nothing more to distract them than menial murder cases that accounted to nothing important, and now the whole thing had become such an abstract concept, they’d turned it into something of a joke.

“Michelle Robson. A cleaner?” Jimmy laughed. “Do we have the files for the cleaners as well?” he asked. “Oh excellent, I agree. Three small children, married for nine years, lives in the suburbs - all definite signs of a serial killer.”

“Maybe her whole family is in on it. A husband and wife murder team, feeding the stolen organs to their growing children,” Brian suggested.

“That’s macabre. I love it,” Jimmy grinned. “You want another beer?”

“Yeah, go for it.”

Somehow this had become the nightly ritual, beers and employee file after employee file. Sometimes Beverly Katz would invite them out, but it was difficult to enjoy the company of anyone when they were all possible suspects for the case. Both men had agreed early on that if it did turn out to be Bev, they needed a career change. She was a singular scientist; intuitive and smart, but also naturally gifted with other people, and that gave her an edge when it came to linking pieces of a crime together. She would be a useful ally if she knew what they were really doing.

“Shall we call it a night?” Brian asked as Jimmy passed him a bottle and sat back down. “This isn’t helping, the list of people who could be suspects is so long now, we need to start doing some digging around for real.”

Jimmy looked less than enthusiastic at the thought, suddenly looking exhausted as he sat back in his chair. “You’re right,” he agreed.

“Try not to sounds too excited,” Brian joked, but Jimmy didn’t respond, now lost in thought. For the first couple of weeks it had surprised Brian how quickly his partner could retreat into himself and become completely unaware of his surroundings, but it appeared to be his way of thinking things through and so Brian had learnt to leave him alone. At least it was slightly less annoying than Jimmy’s excited gabbling when he’d got an idea, in those kinds of moods he could talk for minutes at a time without interruption.  

“My last partner was killed on the job,” he said after a few minutes. Brian looked up at him. “Did anyone tell you that?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I knew,” Brain said, nodding. “Purnell told me. I didn’t bring it up because it’s not my business. You want to talk about it?”

“Not really, I just need you to understand why I need to be careful with this. Why I need to be careful with _you_.”

“I can look after myself, Jim, but I appreciate the sentiment,” when Jimmy stayed silent, he continued. “I know this is the first time I’ve done this kind of work, but I’ve been with the FBI for a long time now, I do know how to handle myself.”

He gave Jimmy another minute before asking, “What do you want to do next?”

Jimmy took a deep breath and shook himself out of whatever mood he was sinking into. “We need to shorten our list, get close to people, and scope everything out a bit more. Work out what makes people tick.”

Brian’s reply was interrupted by a knock on the door, the two men exchanged a glance both of them wearing a frown.

“Are you expecting someone?” he asked. Jimmy shook his head and crossed the room, opening the door.  

A young boy was standing there, a courier, holding two parcels.

“Mr Price?” he questioned.

“That’s me.”

“Is that Mr Zeller as well?” the boy asked.

“Yeah,” Jimmy said. The boy handed over the two parcels. They were identical cardboard boxes, heavier than they first appeared, and after Jimmy signed for them and closed the door, he shook one. Whatever was inside gave a gentle thud.

“This doesn’t feel right,” Brian said, inspecting one of the boxes. Jimmy cleared the coffee table and found a penknife.

“Don’t touch the other box until I say so,” he warned. He found a pair of latex gloves and took his cardigan off. With tense precision he cut down the tape sealing the box, and opened the sides, recoiling at what was inside. Brian peered over his shoulder, at a head contained in a plastic bag. It was positioned face up, and the cheeks had been sliced in such a way that turned the lower half of the face into a horrifying, bloody smile. The eyes had been kept wide open, and neither of the agents could stop looking at the staring, grinning heads.

“There’s a card,” Brian said, noticing something was taped to the inside. Even though he knew he should take it to the lab before he looked, he couldn’t resist, and pulled it out, being sure not to damage the box or the head.

“It’s a greeting,” Jimmy said, feeling nauseas. He handed it to Brian who read the words _Welcome to the Fun!_ In Edwardian style handwriting. “This mean Purnell is right.”

“Either that or someone has a very close eye on the FBI crime scene investigators,” Jimmy muttered. “Call Crawford and Bev, we’ve got a long night ahead of us.”

***

“This is a gesture of good faith in his eyes, he doesn’t want to appear _rude_ ,” Will said. The other box had held another head, and it hadn’t taken them long to work out they were two of the missing heads from the murder scene weeks ago. Crawford had called Will Graham immediately, and so the group of them were gathered in the lab examining the new evidence.

“He’s waited a long time,” Jack pointed out.

“He’s had the heads frozen,” Bev chipped in. “Maybe he was waiting till you got settled in, wanted to shake things up a bit.”

“He knows who we _are_ ,” Brian reminded them, the thought making him shudder. The jokes he had shared with Jimmy about the case now making him feel terrible, the reality of situation hitting him hard. “He knows where Jimmy lives at the least, probably me as well.”

“Any prints?” Jack asked Jimmy, who shook his head.

“Everything’s clean, as you’d expect,” he said, rubbing his face, the time of night now catching up with him.

“We’ve got people tracing where it came from, we know the company used to we’ll track it back to whoever sent it, but, this guy is clever, he’s probably got someone else to send it for him,” Bev told them, she was leaning against a cupboard with her arms folded. “We’re checking out the courier as well, just in case.”

“Thanks, Bev,” Jimmy said.

“Tell me when you’ve got something,” Jack told them, and then turned to leave. “Don’t keep me waiting.”

Will followed him out the lab, but not before giving Brian a lengthy stare.

“Are you two okay?” Bev asked them, putting a hand on Jimmy’s arm.

“Yeah,” they said in unison, neither of them sounding convincing. She gave them sympathetic smiles before returning to the heads, quickly snapping back into scientist mode, as dedicated as ever to finding something they could use.

“I’m going to get some coffee,” Brian decided, feeling too jittery to get anything done until he’d calmed down.  He gave Jimmy a poignant look to encourage his company, and the other man followed him out the lab to the nearest coffee machine.

“This guy has already killed two agents,” Brian reminded him. Jimmy’s posture and expression softened as he lay a hand on his shoulder. “He knows where you live.”

“Brian you’ve got to forget the fact it’s personal, you need to clear your head and treat it as you would when there’s no connection to you. You told me you could shake this off, so shake it off.”

“You’re right, you’re right. I’m fine,” he took a deep breath as Jimmy placed a warm cup of coffee in his hands.

“You’re a good agent, you’re smart and you’re willing to do what it takes. I know you can do this without letting your emotions cloud your vision, so please prove me right.”

Jimmy’s quiet words calmed him down, and he felt his brain click back into focus. He met Jimmy’s gaze and gave a sharp nod of the head.

“If Bev’s right, and he used someone else to send the message then we need to find that person, that’s the best link we’ve got to him.”

“Exactly what I was thinking.”


	4. Chapter 4

“Give me the good news first,” Jack sighed, his sullen stare steadily fixated on the young scientist, who was using all her control not to squirm under the weight of it.

“We know the place and time the parcel was sent,” she said, her words careful and clear. Jack didn’t react, having already been warned of the bad news to follow there was no point getting his hopes up. Bev took a minute, working out the wording in her head so that as little blame could be placed on her as possible.

“The security guard who was meant to send over the CCTV footage is missing, and footage itself has been lost… or destroyed,” she told him, her speech quicker than before. Jack’s chest expanded as he took a slow intake of breath, she had had seen him do this before when he was trying to stay calm.

“So you’re telling me that we have _nothing?_ ” Instead of shouting, his voice was dangerously quiet which was the significantly worse option in Bev’s opinion. She silently cursed Zeller and Price for not being here, they could have told him this instead of dumping it on her.

“We’re working on the whereabouts of the missing guard, his apartment is empty and he hasn’t used any of his credits cards since last night so we’re working under the impression that it’s suspicious. We’ve also got the tech team working on the footage, trying to recover it,” she replied.

“Fine. Where are Jimmy and Brian?”

If she admitted she didn’t know, she would land them in trouble.

“One of our cameras is broken,” she lied, the fact that Jack was a behavioural science expert was in the forefront of her mind as she quickly tried to recover any past information she’d learnt about tell-tale signs of a lying. “They’ve gone to get it fixed and find a replacement.”

“Both of them needed to go?” Jack asked, his eye contact as unwavering as always.

“I guess,” she shrugged. “I didn’t ask.”

Jack watched her for a few moments, saying nothing. “When they get back tell them to get to work,” he told her eventually.  

“Sure,” Bev nodded, seeming a little too enthusiastic she realised after. At least she’d got away with it for now, and the two men would owe her which was a bonus. Jack left, and she waited until he was out of the lab before letting her shoulder slump and her sigh of relief escape her lips.

“Hey, Bev,” Brian said behind her, entering the room from the other side. She turned around and gave him, and Jimmy who was following him, the angriest look she could muster.

“Where the hell have you been? I just had to cover for you in front of Crawford if he finds out I was lying he will kill me.”

“It was nothing,” Jimmy told her, ignoring her obvious glare and the look that Brian gave him. “We’re heading off for the night, you should get some sleep too. You’re looking tired.”  

Brian gave her an apologetic smile before following the other agent back out of the lab with his bag.

“I feel bad for her,” Brian said.

“Don’t,” Jimmy warned him. “Don’t get attached.”

“I know,” he sighed. “God it’s been a long day.”

Jimmy’s jaw was tight as they got into Brian’s car and as he got into the passenger seat he made a noise that conveyed his frustration and annoyance. “We were so close. He made a mistake, Brian, I don’t know how such a perfectionist could forget about the CCTV footage, but he did. Even if it wasn’t him that sent them, it must have been someone he knew. We nearly had him.”

“I know, but it’s not been for nothing. If we find the guard then we’ll be a step closer, he probably saw the footage and can tell us something.”

“Assuming he’s still alive,” Jimmy muttered. “What do you want to do next?”

“Eat,” Brian said. “I’m starving, you must be too.”

***

“It does mean one good thing,” Brian pointed out. They were sat at the small table in his kitchen, going over files from the severed heads case again.

“It is likely to be someone working on this particular case,” Jimmy finished for him. “Narrows down our list.”

“Someone who knew we were meant to be receiving CCTV footage. The report _says_ that the footage was being sent over so we know it existed,” he groaned, then rested his head on the desk, his phone started buzzing next to his hand and he answered without putting it to his ear, switching it onto loud speaker.

“Brian, it’s Bev, I’ve got a question.”

“Go ahead.”

“Not over the phone, I think I’ve found something but I may be reading into it too much,” she said. That was enough to make Brian sit up properly again.

“Come to mine, we’re both here,” he replied. Bev hung up without answering.

Bev turned up twenty minutes later, worry etched into her face as she barged passed Brian and slammed paperwork onto the table.

“Someone has messed with the paperwork,” she said, she took the file that was on top of the pile and handed it to Jimmy.

“What’s wrong with it?” he asked, flicking through. Nothing looked out of place, it was just a regularly filled out report. Brian took his copy of the same file and compared them, they were exactly the same. There was something, however, that he couldn’t put his finger on. He looked closer, not at what was written, but how it was written. Bev noticed the look on Brian’s face.

“You see it, don’t you?” she asked, swallowing hard. Jimmy look between the two of them, trying desperately to scrabble around in his head for the link the two other agents had made, his thoughts jumping around so much that he wasn’t even looking at the report properly. 

Brian started rummaging around the files that were strewn across the table. At the start of every evening they tried to keep their work organised, but as both of them could be as haphazard as each other, every night they ended up sitting in a mess that took them another half an hour to reorganise. Brian found what he was looking for, and handed it to Jimmy. Pictures of the note that had been taped to the inside of the boxes which the heads had arrived in.

Jimmy saw instantly. The handwriting, although not identical, similar enough for it to be suspicious. On the notes send to him and his partner, the writing was much ornate, but the same loops and curls were unmistakable in the report. He looked at the name signed at the bottom, his heart racing.

“It’s not him,” Bev said, ruining the moment for him. Jimmy looked up at her from where his eyes were resting on the name of his brief suspect – Dave Lyons, one of the other scientists in the lab.

“How do you know?”

“He was with me all morning and I filled out the paperwork for both of us because I owed him a favour. He didn’t write this report. Besides why would he write a report about the destroyed footage when he works in fibre analysis with me?”

Jimmy skim read it again. “There’s nothing wrong with the report, it’s not as though any of this is false information.”

“Maybe he’s trying to frame Dave. It makes sense, he’s a senior agent, been working here for a long time. Would have the knowhow to plan all of this,” Brain said. “And look at this, the loop on the ‘g’ here is different, it happens a few times, like he slips out of it.”

“As if this isn’t a natural way of writing for him,” Jimmy nodded.

“Like he’s trying to make it obvious enough to link it to the note,” Bev finished. A moment of revelation filled the room, and settled between the three of them. “This is why you two are here, isn’t it?”

The two men looked at her.

“You’ve known it was someone on the inside since you turned up.”

“No,” Jimmy said, “How could we possibly know that?”

Bev eyed them suspiciously, but didn’t push it. “Should we tell Jack?”

Jimmy gave a slight shake of the head. “Keep it between us for now.”

***

After they’d finished painstakingly going through each report again to find anymore matches for the handwriting, Bev bid them goodnight and left. The two men were running on fumes, yet the sheer amount of coffee intake meant they were wide-eyed and twitchy, neither feeling like sleeping.

“Don’t tell her anything,” Jimmy said once she was safely out of earshot, the urgency in his voice taking Brian by surprise.

“Why not, she came up with this.”

“Exactly. Look, Bri, she’s admitted to filling in Dave’s paperwork, and so far the only lead we have _is_ Dave.”

“You don’t think Beverly Katz is trying to frame him do you, really Jimmy?” Brian was a good agent, and every good agent knows that one of the most important tools you have is your instinct, and his instinct was telling him there was no way Bev had anything to do with this.

“Don’t let your emotions get in the way,” Jimmy warned him. Brian wandered if he should start keeping a tally of how often he was getting told that. “Be objective. She knows our addresses, she knows we are likely to be together going over work, and she knew we were waiting for the CCTV stuff to come through.”

“But she’s _Bev_ , do you really think it’s her? In your gut?”

“It doesn’t matter what I feel!” Jimmy’s voice raising, and his hand smacking down on the table making Brian jump. Clearly the stress and the lack of sleep were getting to him. He got up and started angrily throwing files into his bag. “I trusted my gut last time and it got my partner killed, and I’m not having the same thing happen to you. In the morning I am calling Purnell and I’m telling her that Katz is our main suspect.”

“Jimmy, I am not your old partner,” Brian said quietly, now standing as well to try and rid himself of the feeling of being told off by a teacher. “And what happened to him wasn’t your fault.”

“What do you know about it, you’d barely stepped out the lab before this case, you’re a rookie to undercover work and I’m your senior officer so listen to me, or I’ll get you sent back to California,” he warned, his face turning red.

“Stop acting like I don’t know what I’m doing! I know you’ve been doing this for longer but I’m not an idiot. Stop tiptoeing around me like anything you do could put a bullet in my head, you keep telling me not to get attached maybe you should take your own advice and stop worrying about me!”

“You are meant to be the one person I am worried about, so I’m not going to apologise for caring about you!” Jimmy was yelling now, and even though he was shorter he had an uncanny ability to make Brian feel tiny. They took a moment to breathe, and to register what Jimmy had said. It was then that they both seemed to realise how close they were standing, and before either of them had thought about was happening, their lips were pressed together in a frenzied kiss that, in that moment, felt like it had been building up for a long time.

Jimmy’s hands were both pulling at the collar of Brian’s t-shirt, and without thinking about it, his own hands were placed firmly around Jimmy’s hips. He stepped backwards, falling into the table causing him to stumble, and break the kiss.

Once they were apart, a million rational thoughts and twice as many irrational ones began flying around his head. This was stupid, and Jimmy seemed to be thinking the same thing.

“Well, this makes things complicated,” he said, his hands still on Brian’s chest.

“Yeah, it does.”


	5. Chapter 5

It was supposed to have been a one night thing, but somehow one night had morphed into two, and then a week, a week and half, a fortnight. Every night that they ended up in bed together, Brian half-heartedly promised himself that this would be the last time, _tomorrow_ he would tell Jimmy the work was too important, that they couldn’t be doing this.

The next morning Brian would wake up next to the warm weight of Jimmy sleeping next to him, and as they shared blissful secret kisses in the watery light of dawn, tomorrow never came. Night after night they would finish their work, a soft and familiar quiet falling between them, and Jimmy would take his partner’s hand, or Brian would reach out to touch Jimmy’s cheek, and everything else would fall away.  

They were both leading three lives now. Their real life, where Brian would be returning to California one day, or maybe reassigned to another city by headquarters. There was the life that they were pretending to lead for the sake of Jack Crawford and the rest of the BAU, crime scene investigators who had struck up a good friendship, filling in the gaps left by the two murdered agents whose killer they were meant to be catching. A killer who may be the cheerful and unassuming scientist whom Brian had allowed himself to like. Then there was this, the world that they lived in at night where there was no need to worry about anything but each other, the way their fingers felt tracing patterns onto each other’s skin, the way Brian’s face would flush red as Jimmy kissed along his cheek bone, or how Jimmy held onto him so tight as though he was afraid Brian would slip through his fingers given the chance.

What surprised Brian the most was how easy was to slip from one to other. As soon as they were out of bed, dressed, and discussion had turned to work, anything they felt towards each other dissipated. There were enough glances and small smiles at each other to know that it was always there, under the surface, but while they were in the lab Brian’s head felt clear and focussed.

Jimmy had phoned Purnell and informed her of their beliefs about Beverly Katz, so now their evenings were spent cooped up in ambiguous cars trailing her every move. So far they’d found nothing other than the fact she appeared to be in a relationship with a very pretty girl whom she’d decided to keep separate from her work life. However, there had also been no murders for the last three weeks either, so they stuck at. Neither of them voicing their doubts that Bev had anything to do with this.

***

They were parked a little down the street from Bev’s house. Jimmy shovelling fries into his mouth as though Brian has been starving him for the past week, and Brian staring blankly out of the windscreen, his mind preoccupied with other things to pay much attention to his partner.

“What are you thinking about?” Jimmy asked, spraying food over the steering wheel as he spoke. It took the other man a moment to register that he had been spoken to.

“How bored I am,” Brian muttered, it was a half-truth in that he was presently, very bored. He had in fact been wondering when Jimmy would stop being stubborn and admit they needed to start thinking about a lead other than Beverly Katz. On cue, the woman in question half walked, half stumbled down the path, her girlfriend it tow. She began rooting around in her bag for the front door keys, when the other girl pulled her in for giggly, drunken kiss.

Brian looked at his lap, this wasn’t something he felt he should be intruding in, thinking about how embarrassed he’d feel if someone he thought of as a friend was spying on him and Jimmy. The fact they were investigating her on account of a string of gruesome murders was bad enough without _this._ Jimmy was unashamedly watching them, however, and only stopped when Brian looked up and noticed him grinning to himself. Their eyes met in a moment of understanding as the two women finally made it inside the house.

“It can’t be her, can it?” Jimmy asked, his voice dripping in stubbornness and the hatred of admitting he had been wrong.

“We needed to investigate every possibility,” Brian reminded him, repressing the childish urge to say _I told you so_. “You were right to follow it up.”

Looking a little deflated, Jimmy sat back in the seat and tapped on the steering wheel, plotting his next move.

“We should run some surveillance on the others as well – Jack, Will, the guys in the lab closest to the case,” Brian suggested. He had a nagging feeling in his mind that there was something fundamentally wrong with Will Graham, the guy gave him the shivers. “We could split up for a couple of nights, get it done quicker.”

“We’re not splitting up to do this,” Jimmy said, his voice flat as he ignited the engine. Brian rolled his eyes.

“Why not? Have I proved myself anything but competent?”

“Of course,” Jimmy said gently, almost smiling at Brian’s will to prove himself. “But what would you do if you caught one of them on their way for a bit of murder-y fun? Because I know what I’d do.”

“Well,” Brian spluttered, trying to word it so that he wouldn’t sound like an impulsive idiot. “Well, I’d try and stop him, _obviously_.”

Jimmy nodded. “Exactly. And I don’t know about you, but when I catch the bastard in the act, I’d quite like to have some backup so that you don’t have to stand over my dead body in the lab naming me the next victim.”

Brian couldn’t argue with that, and retreated back into his head until Jimmy flicked the radio on, making him jump as the Bee Gee’s ‘Staying Alive’ blasted through the speakers. Brian raised his eyebrows and tried his best not to lapse into laughter.

“What? It’s good advice,” Jimmy grinned, tapping on the steering wheel in time with the music and pulling ridiculous faces as he bobbed up and down, in a strange attempt at dancing and driving at the same time, until Brian’s willpower slipped and a laugh burst from his lips.

“Keep your eyes on the road, Pricey,” Brian warned, it sounding somewhat futile through the smile that was plastered across his face.

“I’d rather keep my eyes on you,” Jimmy replied. “My place or yours?”

Despite the fact Brian knew how bad of an idea this was, “Yours,” he said.

***

They entered the lab the next morning chatting idly, both stopping as soon as they saw what was in the room.

“Did we miss a call from Crawford?” Brian asked, his words slow as he retrieved his phone from his pocket and stared at it. “Maybe it’s broken,” he muttered.

Laid out on the autopsy table was a body. From where they were standing they couldn’t see who it was, so they stepped closer, looking around for someone else – Bev or Jack, even Will if he could tell them what was going on.

“Hey, this is the missing security guy,” Jimmy said, “When did we find him? Why weren’t we called in?”

“I don’t know, but Bev’s already started the post mortem,” Brian pointed at the Y incision made across the torso of the body. They stared at it, perplexed and increasingly annoyed that they’d missed all of the action.

“What have I done?” Bev said from behind, making them jump. They spun round to see her still with her bag over her shoulder and holding lab coat she had yet to put on. She took one look the body and shot the two men an accusing glance. “Hey, when did you find him? Why have you started without me?”

“We didn’t, we thought you started without us!” Jimmy explained, looking wildly round the lab as if some sort of answer was hiding from him. There was bagged up evidence waiting to be examined by the microscopes.

“What’s going on?” Jack’s booming voice questioned as he joined them, before any of them had begun rifling through the evidence to see what had been found. He stopped dead when he saw the scene, Will Graham on his heels. He turned to Will with a peculiar look on his face, somewhere between confusion and anger. “What’s this?” he directed at Brian.

“We were hoping you tell us actually, boss,” he replied. “It looks like the missing security guard, we got in here a couple of minutes ago this is exactly how we found him, we haven’t touched anything.”

Bev was looking at the work bench and the evidence left for them. “One of these is a note,” she said, drawing the attention of the men. Without touching it, she read out loud. “ _You didn’t seem to be having much luck, so I thought I would help you out_.”

The atmosphere changed in an instant, from confusion to panic as it dawned on everyone what this meant.

“It’s written in the same handwriting as the notes found with the heads,” Bev said, giving Zeller and Price a meaningful look. Jack’s jaw line tightened as he processed the news.

“This is now a crime scene,” he told them all, “I want CCTV, I want forensics in here and you better find something otherwise this is on your heads.” His voice was low and threatening, and the three agents exchanged weary looks. None of them were prepared for this today. He left, once again Will following.

Once the appropriate area was cordoned off, the bags of evidence were put in more evidence bags, and essential personnel were working away trying to find a spot of anything useful in the surrounding lab.

In the meantime, Brian, Jimmy, and Bev got to work on the body and the fibres. It was long, arduous work. Brian established the course of death as manual strangulation - the killer had used his hands to throttle the victim, and it appeared as though the man hadn’t put up much of a fight. Usually in these circumstances there would be extra bruising alluding to a struggle between victim and killer, but instead the only sign of harm on the exterior of the body were bruises around his throat akin to the pattern of finger tips.

This wasn’t what made Brian’s stomach churn, however. What was worrying was the fact that the body was still in rigor mortis.

“Rigor mortis fades after about fifty-four hours maximum,” Brian said to Jimmy. “It’s been three weeks since he went missing,” unable to bring himself to say what he meant, the other man gave him a small nod.

“He was kept alive,” Jimmy sighed, as Brian tried not to think about what he could have possibly gone through. “What about you Bev?”

“We’ve got human hairs, short and blonde. They were cut out though, not pulled out. No hair root, no DNA,” she told them, not bothering to mask to annoyance in her voice. She didn’t take her eye away from the microscope whilst she was talking. She _had_ to find something.

As she blocked them out again, putting all her attention into studying the hairs. Jimmy and Brian returned to the body. Now turning to the interior, examining everything from the incision made to the organs.

“Liver is missing,” Jimmy noted. Brian didn’t hear him, he’d found something much more important than the killer’s token move of taking organs.

“Jimmy,” he said softly. The other man looked up curiously at the change in tone, and saw Brian holding a long black hair with a pair of tweezers. The victim was brunette with hair much shorter than this. The two of them stared at it for a moment, their eyes then moving to rest on the sleek black hair of Beverly Katz.


	6. Chapter 6

Bev just wanted to go to sleep, nothing was more compelling an idea than being unconscious for a few hours and not having to think about any of this. Her hands were handcuffed to the table in front of her and she’d had to answer question after question, interrogated by Jack Crawford and Will Graham, both of whom were acting uncharacteristically harsh towards her. Did they _really_ suspect her? They had worked together for years, surely they must have some gut instinct about her. An instinct that should tell them that she was not, and never could be, cold hearted killer.

“Time of death confirmed around midnight last night,” Brian told Jack, sticking his round the door of the interview and holding out the relevant paper work. He breathed a sigh of relief at being able to relay this information. Midnight last night was when he and Jimmy has witnessed Bev return to her house with her girlfriend.

“Then I have an alibi, I can give you her contact details,” Bev said quickly. “I’ve been telling you for hours I was out last night, you can check with the bars, _please,”_ there was no attempt to hide the desperation in her voice. She just wanted to leave.

“Zeller, sit in with Will,” Jack ordered, leaving to go and make the necessary calls. Brian gave Bev a sympathetic smile, glad that his faith in her had held up, but felt decidedly uncomfortable in taking a seat next to Will Graham. He usually avoided interaction with the consultant at all costs.

“You know, your hair could have got there so many ways,” Brian started talking to fill the silence. The woman sitting in front of him didn’t need to be told that, she was a fibre expert and had been saying the same thing since the DNA came back positive as a match to her. However, Brian couldn’t think of anything else to say. She didn’t bother to smile or thank him, why should she? She nodded her head slightly in recognition of his speaking, then stared at the table.

“There is always the possibility that someone was trying to frame you,” Brian continued carefully, watching for Will’s reaction in particular.

“Interesting theory, Brian, is that an angle you’re working on?” he asked, like Bev, his eyes were fixed steadily on the table in front of them but that wasn’t unusual for Will.

“Just a thought,” he shrugged. Bev gave him a pointed look which clearly read _shut up now_. So Brian succumbed to the heavy silence that engulfed them, having to make a conscious effort not to tap or fidget as they waited for Jack to return.

It seemed to take much longer than was necessary for him to open the door and with a resigned look, confirming that the bars Bev said she was at agreed that she was there, but luckily not much longer after that Bev’s girlfriend turned up.

Brian left the interview room and let himself into the viewing room behind the one way mirror, where he found Jimmy watching the events unfold.

“I want to run surveillance on Graham tonight,” he said, Jimmy nodded. He rubbed his face and ran a hand through his hair thinking about how nice it would be go home and have long bath and good meal. Inside the interview room they were finishing with Bev, unlocking her handcuffs. She rubbed her wrists gingerly.

She left the room trying to maintain her dignity, telling her girlfriend to meet her in the car as she went to collect her things. She didn’t say anything to Brian or Jimmy as she took her bag out of a locker. They’d followed her through the lab trying to think of something helpful to say, but had just ended up looking at each other and trying to make the other speak first.

“Bev, could I see you in my office before you go?” Jack said to her from the door of the lab. She nodded at him before shoving past the two other agents. “Zeller, Price, you too.”

Once in Jack’s office the three of them sat down. Jack took a minute, arranging various papers on his desk which were already meticulously neat and clearing his throat. None of which was a good sign.

“I’m taking you off the case, Beverly,” he said without preamble.

“ _What_?” she said furiously.

“You’re too close to this now.” There wasn’t a hint of apology in his voice. “You’ve had friends killed, you’ve been questioned in relation. You’re not going to be thinking straight and I can’t take any risks with this.”

“You’re joking, right?” she asked, she was trying to keep her breath steady but it was clear she was almost shaking with anger. Her whole body was tense, as if she was ready to pounce on the next person who opened their mouth. For someone so laid back, she was truly terrifying when someone upset her. Neither Brian or Jimmy blamed her, in fact, they were both sitting in shock at the news. Although, Brian couldn’t help but thinking it made sense. If he was as serial killer he would want Beverly Katz off the case as well.

“Jack,” Jimmy said, his voice trying to stay amicable. “Bev’s one of our best brains on this-”

“My decision is final, we’ve got other cases that we still need people on, I’ll move you onto one of those,” Jack replied, folding his hands in front of him.

Bev was teetering on the edge of yelling the building down, then in a heartbeat the atmosphere changed as she stood up and shrugged.

“Fine,” she said, almost with a laugh as if the intensity of the whole situation had become so much it was a reflex to change it into complete apathy. “Fuck you,” she spat at him, “but kicking me off this isn’t going to stop the fact I know there’s something really fucking wrong with this case that you’re ignoring, but Zeller and Price here? They’re going to work it out, and I hope it finishes you Crawford.”

She left the room, leaving the office door wide open and Brian and Jimmy trying to look at anything other than Jack in hope that he wouldn’t realise they were both supressing laughs at the outburst and the look of horror on his face.

“Get out,” he snapped at them, and neither needed to be told twice.

***

Will Graham lived in Virginia, but had taken up residence in Baltimore since the case had required his attention more frequently. Brian and Jimmy were back to their usual tedium as they kept eyes on the small house.

“This is ridiculous,” Brian said. “He’s not home, let me go in, have a look around and I’ll be out before anything happens.”

“No, don’t be stupid,” Jimmy told him. He was reading through the autopsy report of the latest victim for the third time that evening, and without his usual inane chatter about whatever random topic he was interested in that day, Brian was ready to call it quits for the night. Now with another rebuttal of his ideas, the boredom was verging on anger.

“You know that you’re jeopardising this whole investigation with this stupid overprotectiveness thing you’ve got going on?” he asked. Jimmy jaw clenched, but he said nothing. Brian pressed further, suddenly desperate to get a reaction out of him. “I appreciate the sentiment but we’re going to be in enough trouble as it is if Purnell finds out we’re fucking, without the added bonus of how long this is taking.”

“You can’t just go in guns blazing, Bri,” he said, ignoring the comment about their sex life. “This killer is incredibly intelligent and dangerous and we already know he has no problem with murdering agents. I don’t want either of us to become a target,” Jimmy said, the quietness in his voice the most obvious sign that Brian had upset him.

“Well we need to do something before another innocent person gets _murdered_ and _mutilated_ ,” he replied, adding unnecessary emphasis to the harsher words.

Jimmy took a deep breath. “And what do you suggest?”

Brian could tell the level he was keeping his voice was taking a large amount of self-control. He knew his partner well enough by now to know that he only had to press a couple more buttons to get him to snap, to shout at him, to make him sulk for the next few days. But something in his mind held him back, deciding that no matter how pissed off he was he’d probably already done enough damage.

“I’m going to get close to Graham,” he said. Jimmy looked up at him, having also expected Brian to say something to try and push him over the edge. “I have a feeling about him,” he carried on, “just a… I don’t know, something’s not right.”

“Well if you have a _feeling_ , don’t let me stop you,” Jimmy said, and somehow those words cut through Brian more painfully than anything he could have said to Jimmy. They spent the rest of the night in silence before returning to their separate apartments.  


	7. Chapter 7

Will Graham finished towel drying his dog, Winston. Most of his dogs he had left with various acquaintances back in Virginia, but there was no harm in bringing one along with him for company during his stint in Baltimore he’d reasoned. He patted it on the head and ran his fingers through the golden fur as the dog sat patiently, wagging his tail. Will had him well trained.

“You don’t mind being here, do you boy?” he asked the animal, who replied with a quizzical look in his big brown eyes. “We might be here for a while depending on how long the game lasts. I want the last move, you see Winston. I want to be the winner.”

The dog whined at him, and Will could sense he was getting bored at being made to sit still. “Not much longer now,” he muttered, then carried on with his monologue. “See, Brian Zeller is trying to be friendly with me, and I know for a fact he suspects something. Him and Price are always going off together and whispering, Jack doesn’t notice of course because he’s too wrapped up in himself, but I notice.”

He picked up a brush and started easing it through the dog’s long fur. “There’s only one thing for it, it’s risky, but I don’t want him to get an opportunity to ruin my fun. I’ve come too far, transformed myself into something greater than any normal person could comprehend. I am stronger, and smarter. The greatest predator to stalk the earth. I can’t let it be destroyed before people have the chance to see me, to revel in my glory and see what I have become. It would be… unfair,” he paused, and smiled at Winston. “One day I won’t have to hide from them, I won’t have to lower my eyes in case they see too far in and work it out. I will be able to stand proud, with the essence of every pathetic life I have consumed running through my veins… But not _quite_ yet.”

The dog gave a small, sharp bark.

“Firstly, Brian Zeller and Jimmy Price will have to die.”

***

“Hey, Graham, come and take a look at this,” Brian said. He was working on one of the lab’s computers, looking at the files for the two FBI agents who had been killed weeks ago. He’d been over them many times, before he arrived in Baltimore and afterwards with Jimmy. He was trying to draw a reaction from the consultant more than anything, but if he was innocent, then a third opinion wouldn’t go amiss.

Will came over to him, he looked tired. His hair stuck out at odd angles like it always did, and he looked as though he was fighting an internal battle over where he was supposed to place his gaze. He also blinked a lot, Brian noticed, like there was something perpetually irritating his eyes.

He also realised that Jimmy was watching him from the other side of the lab. The air between them had changed overnight. The sharp turn of going from spending every night together and longing for the moments they could slip away from all of this, to barely speaking to each other except for case related topics, had given Brian whiplash. Although they still spent a significant amount of time together, as was necessary when partners on a case, conversation was limited to catching the killer and rarely went any further.

“The two FBI agents,” Will muttered to himself. He closed his eyes as the imagry of the kill flashed behind his eyelids. He allowed himself a few seconds to savour the look of horror on their faces when they had realised that it had been him all along, the way they pleaded with them, promising that they wouldn’t tell a soul and that they would leave the country. He had given them hope. He gave them weapons and let them run. Then he caught them, and killed them.

He had spent a long time prior to the attack trying to work out the aesthetics. In the end he had settled for planting them, burying them up the waist and hanging their organs from their arms like they were fruit to bare, which they were to Will at least.

“Yeah, can you think of anything that might be useful, anything you might have left out of your reports, the smallest thing?” Brian encouraged. Will detested the Zeller spoke to him as though he was a child that need a gentle push in the right direction, but he had to control himself, he had to get Brian to let his guard down.

“I… I’d need to run through the whole case again. Reconstruct it in my head,” Will said, scratching the side of his face as he stared at the screen.

“Could you do that now?” Brain asked. It took everything Will had in him not to roll his eyes. These people could never understand how great minds worked. It wasn’t an instant of ideas that delivered him to conclusions, it was a process, an art form.

“I need quiet and time, and…” he purposely hesitated over wording choice, but Brian got the message.

“Right, like, somewhere that’s not here. Well do you think you could go over it tonight?” 

Will gave a small nod of his head, his usual motion of agreement.

“So you find it hard to think clearly here, huh?” Brian tried to pursue the conversation.

“It’s…uh… there’s a lot going on here,” Will agreed. “Triggers a lot of senses, makes it difficult to get lost in my own head. It’s easier when I have a body laid out in front of me. That gives me something to focus on. When it’s all speculative it requires more concentration.”

They both tried to ignore the fact that Jimmy snorted a laugh to himself, as he tried not to make it obvious he was listening to their conversation. As he caught Brian’s eye he quickly dropped the grin from his face and returned to scowling at his files of finger prints.

“I will look through the files and evidence again tonight. Was there something about this case that caught your attention?” Will asked, hoping the question came across as simple curiosity and not an attempt to probe at how much Brian had worked out. Maybe he needed to speed up his plans.

“Nah, not really. I mean the fact it was agents is scary, makes it kind of personal, you know?”

Will gave him another nod. He did know. He hoped the niggle of terror in the back of this agent’s mind ate away at him, made him suffer in the run up to what was going to happen to him. _You’re not special,_ Will thought to himself. _You’re not like me._

***

“Have you and Graham got a date set yet?” Jimmy asked as he followed Brian out of the lab, a scowl still plastered across his face. He wasn’t one for sugar-coating his moods.

“A date?” Brian asked, looking over his shoulder.

“For the wedding,” Jimmy replied. “It could be murder themed, everything could be blood stained and the cake could be made out of human flesh.”

The other agent rolled his eyes. “Right, so now he’s _eating_ them?”

Jimmy’s lips twitched, trying to fight his command to keep a straight face. Luckily he didn’t think Brain noticed.

“Well it’s either that or he keeps them in little boxes as memories of all the good times he’s had,” he continued. Brian leant on the roof of his car, parked next to Jimmy’s of course. He didn’t want to admit that this conversation was the best thing that had happened all day. Even though he was clearly still in the dog house, at least they were talking.

“We don’t even know if Will _is_ the killer,” Brian reminded him. His gut told him otherwise, but he couldn’t succumb to the tunnel vision that could so easily land you with arresting the wrong the person.

“Now you’re defending him, wow it really is love,” Jimmy said. Brian smirked and shook his head in amusement, pleased to hear him sounding more like himself than he had done for days. A moment passed between them, both too stubborn to suggest what it was they both wanted. Brian slapped a hand on his car then opened the door.

“Well, I’ll text you later if I think of anything,” Brian said, “We should probably go over the case files from the early investigations, see if we missed anything.”

“Okay” Jimmy shrugged. He had been hoping for a night off, or at least the promise of falling asleep next to Brian, somewhere he felt safe. “See you later then, maybe.”

***

Brian knocked his phone hard against the table, infuriated that Jimmy was ignoring his messages. Unbeknownst to him, Jimmy had fallen asleep, so he sat where he was agitatedly tapping and scribbling pointless notes.

Finally, his phone buzzed, but his heart sank dramatically when it wasn’t Jimmy’s name that popped up. It’s was Will Graham’s.

‘ _I could do with your help, you know my address_.’

Brian perked up immediately. This was the chance he had been waiting for, once inside Will’s home he could start surverying for something useful, a clue. A key to this whole case. He tried Jimmy again, the phone ringing continuously before clicking the voicemail. He made a wordless shout of annoyance, then stood up, before sitting back down again, trying to decide what to do.

He should go to Jimmy’s place first, let him know what was going on, make sure there was backup at hand. There was another thought though, recklessly stupid, yet all the more alluring. Go to Will’s, find a condemning piece of evidence that helps solve the case and he and Jimmy could get out of here. The excitement of the thought that this could be over, won the battle, and the voices telling him not to be an idiot were silenced with determination. He was a good agent, he could handle himself for one evening.

‘ _Give me half an hour_ ,’ he typed out, then pressed send.  


	8. Chapter 8

The house that Will had decided to stay in was a small nondescript building on a street where every house looked the same. Brian checked the number again as he sat in his car and thought about going back. His previous irritation with Jimmy had quickly dissipated when it had dawned on him how stupid this could be, and the yearning to impress or annoy or whatever it was he wanted out of Jimmy, had turned into a longing for the other man to be walking into this with him.

He got out of the car and made the short journey from the sidewalk to the front door, smirking at the fact Will had taken the time to plant a flower bed in the middle of the lawn. He knocked three times on the door due to the lack of a doorbell to ring, then pulled at his leather jacket impatiently before putting his hands in his pockets and shuffling his feet instead.

The dog seemed to notice him before Will did, and it made Brian jump as it appeared in the window barking sharply and loudly until his owner opened the door.  

“Hello, Brian,” he greeted, opening the door wide enough to let the agent through. He held eye contact for barely a second before dropping his gaze to the floor and closing the door. Brian was getting used to this behaviour now, accepting the fact that for whatever reason, Will’s social skills were not up to scratch. It didn’t mean anything, lots of people found interaction difficult and lots of people managed not to be serial killers.

Will lead him through to the front door where the dog was sitting, wagging his tail excitedly and waiting for the cue from his owner that it was okay to say hello to Brian.

“He’s friendly,” Will told him, and Brian didn’t need any more encouragement to crouch down and pet the dog who responded happily by trying to lick his face. This dog was very well looked after, his coat was soft and shiny and he was a good size. Kindness to animals was not a usual signal of someone being a serial killer, in fact, one of the earliest signs tended to be the opposite; cruelness to animals.

“Winston,” Will warned, the dog immediately left Brian alone so he stood up, his jeans now covered in dog hair.  “Do you want a drink?” he asked the agent.

Brian shook his head. “No thanks, shall we just get on with what you found?”

Will ignored him and poured two glasses of whiskey, passing one over as he sat down in the arm chair leaving Brian to sit on the couch. The dog jumped up next to him.

“So where are you case files?” he asked Will. Will leaned over, his brow furrowed and worry etched onto his face. “What’s wrong?”

“I need to ask you something,” Will replied, taking a swig of his drink and then swallowing hard, staring into the amber liquid as though he might find his answers at the bottom of the glass. “Do you and Price have a lead on something that you haven’t told Jack?”

Now it was Brian’s turn to look away.

“If you’re investigating what I think you’re investigating. I think you’re right. And if I know what it is I can guarantee that it won’t take long before _he_ knows, and then you’re in danger and I’m in danger and I would prefer not to die quite yet.”

This was a the most succinctly he had ever heard Will talk, usually if he was walking the team through the crime scene or the thoughts of a murderer his speech was full of uselessly poetic metaphors and imagery, but the man sitting in front of him was not the man who stood in front of dead bodies and mentally re-enacted crimes. This man was scared for his life, which made Brian wonder, _what had he found?_

He too took a sip of the whiskey. “What do you think I’m investigating?” he asked, a hint of hesitance apparent in his voice. Will’s lip twitched minutely, almost a smile of a relief.

“Someone within the FBI,” he replied forwardly. He was now staring Brian straight in the eye. They were cold and empty and terrifying. Brian’s heart sunk in nauseating realisation, as Will smirked and tipped his head to the side. He wasn’t scared at all, he was playing a game.

His instinct was to run, his brain was screaming at him to, his heart was pumping at an alarming rate, enough to provide the oxygen his muscles needed to sprint away from here or land a forceful punch across Graham’s face. Except he couldn’t move. And that’s when his vision began to go to blurry and his arms and legs went limp.

“What have you done to me?” he slurred, trying to stand up, but finding that even his fingers felt too heavy to move. His brain was swimming now, the room around him distorted and the glass dropped from his hand.  He momentarily became entranced with how it seemed to fall in slow motion, the drink flying from the top and then glass shattering as it hit the floor. Glass breaking was beautiful, he thought then remembered there was something more pressing.

“Poison?” he managed to say, trying to lift his head up, but like the rest of him it was too heavy and he didn’t have the energy. He closed his eyes, and then forced them open again. Will kneeled in front of him and cradled his head in his hands, and images of Jimmy flashed in his mind. Why didn’t he go to Jimmy first?

“It’s just going to send you to sleep, it’s harmless. I’m going to take you somewhere more private,” Will told him, his voice now dripping in calm. Nothing like the awkward man who couldn’t make eye contact. He stroked Brian’s hair and hushed him every time he tried to speak. “Just give in,” he whispered, “let go, everything is going to be okay. I promise.”

Then Brian couldn’t hold on for any longer and darkness washed over him.

When he woke up, he didn’t know where he was.

***

“Ah, you’re awake,” Will smiled down at him. There were a few fuzzy moments before the room came into focus properly and Brian noticed he was tied to a chair. Rope was digging into his wrists behind the chair, round his ankles and around his waist holding him tightly in place. “Your phone and wallet are just over here, you won’t be needing them again but I’ll keep them safe.”

“You’re going to kill me,” Brian said. Not a question, a statement, heavy with the weight of resignation and of all the things that he never got to say or do. Will had made one mistake though, he hadn’t gagged him, and that meant Brian could talk.

Growing up Brian had often found himself in trouble at home and at school, and yet he had learned early on that it was possible to talk himself out of any situation if he did it in the right way. Adults who liked him would call him cheeky, adults who didn’t like him called him a troublemaker and attention seeker.  Of course, he didn’t think he could talk enough to make Will let him go, but he could buy some time.

“I don’t want to kill you, I hope you understand that. You shouldn’t have got so close, now all of this has got very messy and in fear of you running off and telling someone important, you’re going to have to die,” Will told him, adding a sad smile at the end. Brian squinted to see what Will was doing. The room was mostly dark, but it appeared to be a small cabin of some kind. There was a lamp on in the corner, the soft orange light it was emitting caused long shadows in the room, adding to the atmosphere. Brian would have rolled his eyes at the dramatics if he wasn’t so afraid.

“The other FBI agents, that was you?” Brian asked, he was surprised at how easy it was to keep the fear that should have rendered speechless, out of his voice. Under the pressure, he felt oddly focused. Will turned around holding a long sharp knife in his hands. Brian tried to hide the breath he took in sharply.

“Yes, that was me. I wasn’t so sad about that, they deserved what happened to them. They were… rude,” the choice of wording seemed to amuse him as he paused with his finger on the blade of the knife. Brian kept his eyes trained on him, or more accurately, on the weapon.

“What did they do?” he asked. Will pulled up a wooden chair, identical to the one that Brian was tied to, and sat opposite and all too close for Brian’s liking.

“They made life difficult for me, they treated me like I was a piece of dirt that needed to be swept out of the house. So I killed them and they died begging me for mercy. They lay bleeding at my feet and _begged_ me.”

The look in the killer’s eyes made Brian sick. He looked proud, he looked how Brian imagined a God would look as he watched his people and could choose who lived and died.

“They acted so big and brave all the time, but in that moment they were scared and pathetic and they saw that I was more than they could ever have hoped to be. But you’re trying to distract me, Brian, very clever.”

He pressed the knife against Brian’s cheek, holding back just enough that it didn’t break the skin. In any other circumstance maybe Brian, like the two agents, would have begged him not to, but after Will’s speech about how the begging amused him, he refused to give the killer the satisfaction. If Brian was going to die here he would do it with some dignity.

“How long till Jimmy notices you’re missing?” Will asked, close enough now that the whiskey still on his breath could be smelt. “Will it be when you don’t answer your phone, or when you don’t show up for work tomorrow. Will he just think you’re ignoring him, I notice you two seem to be fighting at the moment, or will he be able to tell something is wrong?”

Brian clenched and unclenched his jaw, trying not to let on how talking of Jimmy was riling him up. “Jimmy will know, he’ll find me,” he said. Will smiled and relieved pressure on the knife a small amount.

“You’re in love with him,” he noted. “I did think maybe you two were… what happened between you?”

“We had a fight,” Brian said vaguely, trying to drag the conversation out as it seemed to appease the other man.

“About?”

“I thought he wasn’t taking enough risks with the case,” he replied, almost laughing at the ridiculousness of that fact. Why hadn’t he listened, why had he not trusted that Jimmy knew what he was doing? Why had he left without saying where he was going? Why had he not even left a voicemail?

“Does he feel the same about you?” the killer questioned. He seemed genuinely interested which twisted Brian’s stomach even more. He didn’t want to be sharing this information, but he was clinging onto seconds here and he didn’t want to die.

“I think so, yes. He’s cautious about it. He’s lost people close to him and I think he’s scared of losing me too,” he explained. _Don’t cry,_ he told himself. The next words caught in his throat. “Please don’t do that to him.”

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry but I have to,” Will said his voice soft. He reached out with his other hand and held Brian’s cheek as he had earlier when he’d drugged Brian unconscious. Brian couldn’t do anything as Will moved his fingers through his dark curls, he wanted to close his eyes and think of Jimmy. Pray that Jimmy was on his way, that we was going to burst through the door any moment. But he didn’t. Brian was alone with Will Graham, and that’s when he felt the cold, sharp blade on his neck.

“I’ll do it quickly, I promise.”


	9. Chapter 9

His head was lulled back on the back of the couch and his mouth was half open. Had Brian been there, it wouldn’t have been long before he’d nudged Jimmy awake and teased him for snoring. Mental and physical exhaustion had taken over his body before he’d barely sat down, and hence he’d managed to sleep through his phone going off in his bag every few seconds, as Brian had tried to get in touch with him.

It was pitch black outside when he finally woke up, and he sat for a few minutes thinking about sleeping where he was so he didn’t have to move, but then his stomach growled in hunger and so he heaved himself up and stared pointlessly into the nearly empty fridge, before fishing around in a drawer for a takeaway menu.

He found his phone, and before typing in the number for the pizza delivery place, frowned at the number of texts and missed calls he had from Brian. They mostly said the same thing, variations of ‘Do you want to come over?’, ‘Do you want to work tonight or not?’, and ‘Where are you?’. The number of missed calls had somehow reached fifteen without waking him up, but Brian hadn’t left a voicemail.

He called Brian back, there was no way he was working now, but he should apologise. He had been a moody bastard recently whilst the other agent had just been trying to do his best to work the case quickly. The phone rang seven times before it was answered.

“Jimmy,” a gracious voice said down the line, a voice that was most definitely did not belong to Brian.

“Who is this?” he replied.

“It’s Will Graham,” Will said, “I was going to call you, actually, this is rather convenient.”

“Where’s Brian?” Jimmy asked tensely, the idea of Brian being with Will under any circumstances made him irrationally irritated. Jealousy spiked a little but he tried to ignore it.

“He’s tied up right now,” was the reply, his voice was slimy and it almost sounded like he wanted to laugh which made Jimmy’s gut twist.

“Why, what’s he doing?”

“You misunderstand me, I meant that quite literally.” Jimmy could hear the smirk down the phone and a horrendous mix of anger and fear coursed through his body. _What the hell had Brian done?_

“Let me speak to him,” Jimmy demanded, he had scrunched the takeaway leaflet into a ball as his hand curled into a fist. His whole body was rigid, prepared to fight his way to Brian if that’s what it would take.

“He’s unconscious at the moment, sorry Jimmy. I’ll text you where we are though, and you can come and get him. I would hurry up if I was you, there’s no telling when I’ll get bored with him.”

Before Jimmy could reply Will had hung up. Any remnants of sleep were non-existent and even the hunger had disappeared, all that mattered now was Brian. He grabbed his car keys and slipped his feet into his shoes, hopping out the door whilst trying to tie the laces without having to stop. He wasn’t going to waste any time.

Shoes on, he dialled Jack’s number as he ran full speed down the stairs of his apartment block. In hindsight, it should have crossed his mind that Will wouldn’t have told him where he was if he wasn’t expecting Jimmy to come after him and to alert Crawford, but in the heat of the moment he didn’t stop to think about how strange it was.

“Jack, Will’s got Brian. I’m on my way I’ll text you the address, no time to explain meet me and bring the SWAT team.”

“Jimmy, calm down what’s happened?”

“Will is the serial killer, it’s _Will Graham,_ just trust me on this.”

He hung before Jack could argue and trusted that someone in his position and with his experience could tell that Jimmy was being serious. Just before he reached his car his text alert went off, Will had sent him an address which he jabbed into his satnav, it seemed to be a remote cabin. _How fitting,_ he thought bitterly to himself, but it made sense. The killer had shown a flare for theatrics, of course he would own a creepy cabin in the woods where he could tie people up and do god knows what to them. He put his foot hard on the accelerator and if anyone tried to stop him he vowed he would drive straight past.

***

The door creaked open and the knife moved away from the bare skin of Brian’s neck. It had cut him, he could feel the warm trickle of sticky blood, but it didn’t feel deep.

“Playing with your food again, Will?” Jack Crawford said, standing in the door way in his long coat and hat, his silhouette blocking out the headlights of his car. Brian breathed a sigh of relief before the words that had actually been spoken registered properly in his mind. He struggled with the ropes again. 

“You won’t get out that way,” Jack told him, he approached Will who was now standing. “Will, take a seat,” he ordered. “Why did you phone Jimmy?”

“You phoned Jimmy?” Brian asked, Jack gave him a look which was a very clear signal for him to shut up, which he did.

“I thought I’d get him here and kill them both, deal with it in one night. I knew he’d call you and I assumed you just stay clear and make it look like they’d both left the city. I didn’t expect you to turn up.”

“You’ve got carried away with this,” Jack told him.   He didn’t sound happy and Brian looked between the two of them. “You _know_ that these two should be my kills.”

With that Brian tried loosen the ropes again, he couldn’t think of anything apart from getting free. There was no room in his brain to think about the fact that it had never been one, it had been _two_ killers all along. Not only Will Graham who he had disliked instantly, but Jack Crawford. Jack had known this whole time. His skin was burning where the rope was rubbing merciless against the sensitive skin. He wanted to scream out with the sheer terror that was occupying every cell in his body, but there was enough sense telling him to keep quiet.

“You weren’t doing anything Jack, you passed on your turn when you didn’t discard of Beverly Katz,” Will said.

“There was no point in killing Bev, do you just want to kill everyone who works there? Do you not think that will start looking stranger than it already does?”

“You’re _weak,”_ Will spat at him, he stood up as Jack squared up to him. He was bigger than Will, and calmer, evidentially he was used to having the up hand in this relationship.

“I just don’t want to dirty my hands in the mess that you’ve made,” Jack said. “You’re nothing without me and you know it, and now you’ve got carried away and put me in danger. Now hurry up and finish him off and then I’m going to deal with you.”

For the first time that night, Will was the one to look scared. Evidentially he didn’t want to follow Jack’s orders, but it appeared that he had no other choice.

***

Jimmy grabbed the gun in the glove compartment and checked it was still loaded, he was sure that they would have heard his car as he approached the cabin down the winding little road, but he didn’t care. There were two other cars here, but no SWAT Team. Jimmy couldn’t afford to wait so he let his years of training kick in, and walked straight into the small building, finger on the trigger ready to shoot the first person who tried to stop him.

What he didn’t expect to find was Jack Crawford encouraging Will to commit murder.

The next few seconds happened too quickly for any one of them to see it all clearly. Will lurched forward ready to finish Brian, drawing the knife across the man’s throat as he had first intended covering himself and the room in an alarming spray of blood.

Jimmy shot him three times.

Jack pulled a gun on him as Graham fell to the floor, but he underestimated Jimmy’s reflexes and before he could shoot him and clean up the mess his protégé had made, he became part of it, as Jimmy’s finger was on the trigger again and a bullet lodged itself into Jack’s shoulder causing him to drop the weapon. Jimmy shot him again to keep him down, but hopefully not kill him. He wanted answers.

The only thing that Jimmy was fully aware of, that would stick in his mind for the rest of his life, was when he finally reached Brian. He was losing blood at an alarming rate and Jimmy pressed on the wound with his hand to try to slow it down. 

“Brian,” he said, there was no point to saying it, but the name fell from his lips in desperation. It wasn’t long before his hands were covered in red, he shook his jacket off and held it in place over Brian’s neck as he tried to untie the ropes holding him to the chair. “Brian,” he said again.

There was no use trying to untie the knots, instead he kept pressure on the wound and found his phone, dialling nine-one-one with a shaky hand, covering the screen in blood and trying not to panic. It was only then that he realised there were tears streaming down his face and mingling with the blood. A cry caught in his throat which he tried to choke down as his call was answered.

Brian’s face was white now and he was barely conscious, but he finally felt safe. He had no idea how Jimmy had found him, and was not certain how he’d managed to stop Jack and Will, but he didn’t want to spend his last few moments thinking about that. He was going to die here, but the realisation came with a settling sense of peace and finality as the chaos of the night finally cleared. Yes, he was going to die, but he got to do so in Jimmy Price’s arms, and in that Brian found a huge amount of comfort.


	10. Chapter 10

The noises of the hospital machines became a count of the time that passed for Jimmy as he sat by Brian’s side. Each beep was the tally of a moment where Brian was still unconscious, and the whirring quickly faded to a backdrop for Jimmy’s thoughts. The doctors said he would pull through, that it was only a matter of time, but seeing him so small underneath the bed sheets with drips in his arm and tubes across his face, made that possibility seem less certain.

Jimmy hadn’t left his side despite numerous colleagues and nurses encouraging him to get some sleep. Purnell had arrived within hours and taken Jimmy’s statement, then left without so much as a thank you. Beverly Katz had been appointed acting head of the BAU until a permanent replacement was found, and Will Graham had been confirmed dead at the scene. Jack had survived and was recovering from surgery, a police officer on guard outside his room at all times.

Jimmy didn’t care about any of them, he’d let each piece of news wash over him allowing his brain to store it somewhere until the time came when he could process and respond to it. Until then, only Brian occupied this thoughts. The idea of even leaving for an hour to have a shower and change his clothes became unthinkable, it would be typical that Brian would wake up when he wasn’t there, so it was three days before Beverly convinced him to leave the hospital, promising to ring him if the slightest thing changed. It didn’t of course, and this went on for two long weeks.

“Did you die too?” was the first thing Brian said when he woke up. Jimmy had been dozing, and so hadn’t noticed Brian’s eyelids flicker for a few moments before they opened properly. His voice was croaky and it seemed to take a great deal of effort to say the words, but despite all that, Jimmy laughed.

“No, I’m very much alive,” he said. “I hope, otherwise the afterlife is depressingly similar to actual life and extremely boring,” he added. Brian sat up, brushing away Jimmy’s hand as he tried to help move the pillows.

“I didn’t die?” Brian asked, his hand travelled to his neck and rested on the wound dressing. He flinched slightly as he pressed on it, then slowly looked up at Jimmy.

“They said you’ll have a scar, but other than that you should be okay,” Jimmy explained. “I’m glad you’re awake actually, I was beginning to think that on our next case I’d have wheel my comatose partner around crime scenes.”

“How long have I been asleep?” he asked, as Jimmy passed him a glass of water, and before he had a chance to reply: “What happened to Will? And Jack? Did they hurt you? What happened after I… you know…?”

But before Brian had a chance to have any of his questions answered, a nurse came bustling in and began fussing over him, encouraging him to rest and hinting that Jimmy should leave him to recover. Jimmy, however, acted oblivious to any kind of suggestion that it was time for him to go, much to Brian’s gratefulness. And after being informed he’d been unconscious for two weeks, insisted that the last thing he wanted was to sleep, and eventually after copious amount of assurance from Brian and eye rolling from Jimmy, the nurse left the room.

“Let’s get this out of the way,” Brian sighed. “Tell me everything.”

“What do you remember?”

“I remember you coming in and then…” his jaw clenched as he remembered the burning pain of the knife edge cutting through his throat. “Someone fired a gun but I don’t know who,” he frowned, then asked worriedly. “Are you okay? Did you get hurt?”

“I’m fine, I’m the one who shot-” he swallowed the rest of the sentence, trying to hide the fact that thinking about that night made his hands shake. The three gunshots he fired at Will burst through his mind as though it was happening all over again, flashing before his eyes and leaving him with ringing in his ears. “Will Graham is dead,” he said with more conviction. Even though the man had been a prolific serial killer, saying the words _I killed Will Graham_ wouldn’t sit right on his tongue.

“Jack?” Brian asked softly.

“He’s alive. He’s in hospital, but he’s alive,” Jimmy nodded. A silence fell between them, dense with all the questions they still hadn’t approached and all the feelings locked up inside ready to come gushing out.

“Bev?” Brian said after a while.

“She’s fine, she’s fine,” Jimmy assured him. “She’s been to see you a lot, looked after me as well. Purnell made her head of the BAU while they interview for an actual replacement.”

“How’s she finding it?”

Jimmy laughed. “Oh she hates it, apparently she emails Purnell with lists of potential candidates every morning.”

Brian smiled at that. “Look,” he said, fidgeting the drip in his arm. “The past few weeks. I mean,  before all of this. I’m sorry that I told you that you were delaying the investigation. I was wrong, I was _so_ wrong. I should have listened to you and I should have let you know where I was going and I hope you can forgive me.”

Jimmy placed his hand over Brian’s. “There’s nothing to forgive, I shouldn’t have been so hard on you.”

“Is that an apology?”

He looked at the man in the bed and couldn’t help himself from grinning at the look in Brian’s eye, the one that appeared every time he was teasing Jimmy.

“Come here,” Brian said, wiggling over to the over side of the bed and patting the spot next to him. It wasn’t big enough to fit both of them, but neither complained and they wrapped their arms around each other and enjoyed the fact that they were both here, alive and together and this case was over.

“How did you find me?” Brian asked, remembering the fuzzy, dream-like memory of laying in his partner’s arms believing he was going to die, with no idea where Jimmy had come from, but eternally thankful all the same.

“I was trying to call you but Will picked up, told me what he was going do to you,” Jimmy explained. “Even text me where you were.”

“So you walked straight into a trap?” Brian asked. That somehow made him angry. The idea that Jimmy would be so careless with his own life made him panic, what if he did something like that again? He reminded himself to breathe, if Jimmy hadn’t turned up when he had, he would be dead.

“What did you expect me to do? I wasn’t just going to leave you, I just wish I’d known about Jack,” Jimmy replied, the tone of his voice incredulous. He knew what Brian was thinking, but had an inkling that had the roles been reversed, exactly the same choices would have been made.

“There’s no way you could have known about Jack.”

Brian shuddered. Jack had never been a viable suspect in his mind, and he was sure that had Will not got so carried away with himself, Jack Crawford may never have been caught. He closed his eyes, trying to squeeze any thoughts of the past few months out of his head so he could focus on Jimmy. He pressed a kiss to his forehead.

“What happens next?” he asked the older agent.

“I don’t know about you, but I need a holiday.”

***

“ _Jimmy_ ,” Brian whined, stretching out on the sun lounger. “Please? I nearly died you know,” he added, holding out his empty cocktail glass to his boyfriend who gave him a stony look.

“That doesn’t get to be your excuse for everything,” Jimmy scolded, but took the glass anyway, disappearing to the hotel bar and leaving Brian to get caught up in his book again. He returned minutes later, setting the drink down on the table between them, and straddled his hips, taking the book off of him and dropping it on the floor next to them.

He kissed Brian before he had a chance to start complaining, then moved his lips down Brian’s neck, kissing his way across the scar that would be there for the rest of his life.

“Do you want to take this up to our room?” Brian asked, after a few minutes of heated kissing. Jimmy moved round and smiled into Brian’s neck.

“What’s wrong with here?” he laughed, his breath tickling Brian’s skin.

“I’m not having sex with you in public,” Brian said a little too loudly, drawing outraged looks from nearby people all out enjoying their holiday. “Please? I nearly died you know,” he added, puffing his cheeks out and trying not to laugh as Jimmy pulled away and scowled again.

“I’m going to be the one to kill you if you say that again,” he muttered. None the less, he grabbed their drinks while Brian picked his book up and threw the towels over his shoulder. “How do you feel about me tying you up?” he smirked in payback for being made to move.

“I do _not_ want to be tied up,” Brian told him. “That’s not funny.”

“Oh, why’s that?” Jimmy asked him, mock confusion in his voice.

“ _I nearly died_.”

“It’s a good job I love you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well that's all folks. Thank you so much to everyone who's read this, and espeically to [Roxanne](http://thisjabroni.tumblr.com) who came up with the original idea. 
> 
> If you want to say hi come speak to me on [tumblr!](http://willgrahamed.tumblr.com)


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